Learn From My Mistakes So Your Beer Doesn't End Up In The Drain
And What You Can Learn From Them
Did your homebrewed beer not come out exactly how you wanted? Or even worse did your beer end up being undrinakble? Don’t worry you’re not alone. Just about every homebrewer that I’ve met have made more than a few mistakes. Most of the time those mistakes turn into alright beers, but sometimes those beers are so bad that they don’t have to be thrown it.
Here’s just a handful of the mistakes that I’ve made:
I Had Mold In My Beer Bottle
I was in a rush. I assumed my beer bottles were clean, so I just filled them up with beer and bottled with them without a care in the world. It wasn’t until I started to drink them a month or so later that I realized that a bunch of them had an added ingredient – mold. It added a not so sexy flavor, not to mention the mold flakes that were floating around my mug.
Lesson: Make sure you clean out your beer bottles completely after you empty them. On brew day make sure that they’re still 100% clean before you fill them with more beer. I’ll even go a little further and say that you should make sure that all of your equipment is cleaned and sanitized.
I Forgot An Ingredient
This has happened to me multiple times, but most recently while I was brewing my breakfast stout. It called for me to steep 1.5 lbs Flaked Oats and 0.5 lbs English Roasted Barley. The only problem was that I forgot the Flaked Oats and stepped only the barley. I only had one mesh bag for the grains, so I had to add the Flaked Oats to that same bag with the Barley and steeped them together. Luckily, it turned out alright.
Lesson: Make sure you read the instructions before you begin brewing. Even simple recipes can be complicated when you’re busy brewing.
My Beer Didn’t Carbonate
Last summer I brewed a Strawberry wheat. The first beer I tried was over carbed. The second beer had no carbonation. Of the forty or so bottles, maybe five were carbed while the rest were flat. It was still drinkable but it wasn’t my first choice. I’m still not sure what went wrong here. I followed all of the directions. My gravity readings were on point, so the yeast were healthy. Something just went wrong and I’m still trying to figure out what.
Lesson: Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew. Even when you do everything right, sometimes you’re going to have a batch. Just make sure that you follow the instructions, make sure your equipment is cleaned and santized, and your beer should come out tasting great.
What homebrewing mistakes, mishaps or disasters have you survived?
If you’re new to homebrewing, and want to learn more, make sure you follow Passion For The Pint on Facebook or Twitter. If you’re looking to take it a step further, there’s an online course for homebrewing called the HomeBrew Academy. I’ll be reviewing it later this month.
